Film
9
The effectiveness of ‘intertainment depends on fast streaming times and high-bandwidths that allow the onscreen action to flow, and animation lends itself particularly well to the technical limitations of casual net viewing. Among all the endless animé mash-ups, enterprising Scottish company Red Kite have won a prominent Spot on a BBC website for Neil Jack's The Tree Officer (www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ filmnetwork). This documentary-style account of the daily existence of a jovial man, whose mission in life is to kill trees. is charmingly rendered and offers the laconic sense of humour that bears the individual stamp of both Jack and Red Kite's work.
Alternatively. you can cross the borders of animation with ten minute short The Hedgehog and The Fog (www.youtube.com). As the title suggests. Yuriy Norshteyn’s 1975 film revolves around a humble hedgehog's adventures as he carries a bundles of food cross- country, arriving happily at his destination to enjoy a cosy chat with his bear-like friend who gathers to watch the stars with him. It’s a cuddly, communist-era parable of considerable pathos you'd be unlikely to get a chance to see unless you were planning to seek out and purchase the imposingly titled Masters of Russian Animation Volume 3 on DVD.
And unless you're a regular buyer of DVDs featuring semi- pornographic animations, you may not be familiar with Ralph Bakshi's Fritz the Cat. Made it 1972, this film's non-PC reflections of sex, drugs and general air of anarchy have made it hard to find in any format. but you can get a flavour of this film by watching its truly bizarre sequel. The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat (video.google.co.uk). Post-Fritz, Bakshi was quickly headhunted for the abortive first attempt to produce the Lord of the Rings trilogy for the big screen. so this sequel was made without him by mainstream children‘s animator Robert Taylor. But don’t be fooled by this frisky little feline; the first animated feature ever to compete in competition in Cannes more than lives up to its filthy reputation, and reminds us that cartoons have never been aimed solely at children. (Eddie Harrison)
44 THE LIST 12- 26 Apr .7007
TRUE CRIME/DRAMA ALPHA DOG (15) 117min 000
Justin Timberlake’s inauspicious lead role in straight to-landfill clunker Edison proved once again that global pop stardom doesn't necessarily equate with matinee idol status. Yet the trouser snake acquits himself surprisingly well in Alpha Dog. a youth-gone-wild melodrama from Nick Cassavetes (Unhook the Stars. The Notebook) based on the real-life murder of teen Nick Markowitz (here renamed Zack Mazursky) in 2000. Markowitz was abducted as collateral on a minor drug debt. and after two days of extremely public partying with his hedonistic captors. was brutally executed (the same story riffed by Larry Clark in his 2001 film Bully).
Following in the footsteps of his father. improvisational film guru John. Cassavetes coaxes natural performances from his young cast. while philosophically liberal enough to smear blame on every possible aspect of California‘s sun-drenched society. including pot-dealing entrepreneurs. vacant girlfriends and ineffectual parents.
Some arch directorial tricks and bloated cameos from Bruce Willis and Sharon Stone only distract from Markowitz's story. leaving Timberlake to assume the pivotal role of a witness whose unwillingness to intervene tilts events towards tragedy. As with Barbara Kopple's recent Havoc the posh gangbanger etiquette that Cassavetes illustrates quickly wears thin. but Timberlake's charismatic performance reveals Alpha Dog's bleak. nihilistic core. (Eddie Harrison) I General release from Fri 20 April.
I!
COLD WAR DRAMA THE LIVES OF OTHERS (12A) 138 mins 00..
The masteitui debut feature of writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. The Lives of Others is the first major German film to examine the activities of the Stasi in the former East Germany. Where the likes of Wolfgang Becker's Good Bye Lenin! drew on a curiously rose-tinted nostalgia for life under a Communist dictatorship, von Donnersmarck's suspenseful and poignant thriller reveals the chilling realities of daily existence under a totalitarian system. in which 100.000 secret service officers and 200.000 informants helped control the population.
It‘s a measure of von Donnersmarck's confidence in his storytelling that the central character. Stasi agent Captain Wiesler (Ulrich lvluhe). whom we first meet relentlessly interrogating a suspect in a East Berlin detention centre in 1984. is a far from sympathetic individual. Apparently without family or friends. and devoted to his work as the ‘sword and shield' of the party. he seems drained of human emotions. Asked to conduct a surveillance operation by his superior Grubit/ (Ulrich Tukur). Wiesler finds himself spying on successful playwright George Dreyman (Sebastian Koch). and his stage actress girlfriend (Martina Gedeck).
An atmosphere of fear and suspicion pervades this superbly acted work. reflected in the way bright colours have been eliminated from its palette: this is a world of metallic greys. sickly greens and oppressive beiges. What makes the drama here so absorbing is that the protagonists. torn between principles and feelings. face such difficult human dilemmas. (Tom Dawson)
I Selected release from Fri I3 Apr.
EPIC DRAMA'WAR CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER (15) 114min 0000
Zhang Yimou’s third martial arthouse adventure is less action oriented than the co-writer and director’s last, House of Flying Daggers, but even more ravishing in visual terms than his first stab at the genre, Hero. At heart Curse of the Golden Flower is an intimate chamber piece that dramatises the end of the flamboyant but decaying 1000-year-old feudal Tang dynasty, as represented by the patriarchal Emperor (Chow Yun Fat) and his subjugated Empress (Yimou’s former muse Gong Li, here working with her mentor for the first time since 1995’s Shanghai Triad) and their three varying loyal and wayward sons.
Yimou periodically punctuates the domestic drama with a series of stunningly realised outdoors combat set pieces that serve to underscore what’s going on behind the walls of the Imperial Palace. During the grandest set-piece, for example, thousands of yellow armour-clad warriors invade the city and attempt to stage a coup d’état on the eve of the golden flower festival, while, inside, the Emperor’s increasingly brutal efforts to maintain order in his household begin to crumble as his wife and her favourite son rebel against his iron rule. The ruination of the Imperial family is also juxtaposed with the film’s sumptuous period design - in which everyone and everything is draped in gold and jade - signifying the upkeep of deceitful appearances in the face of moral bankruptcy.
It’s the stuff of Shakespeare, and at least three of the Bard’s plays - King Lear, Hamlet and Macbeth - are invoked as entropy unravels the Tang dynasty. Curse of the Golden Flower may not impress chop socky fans in the same way that Hero and Flying Daggers did, but the literary core makes it a richer emotional experience. (Miles Fielder)
I General release from Fri 73 Apr.